AbstractResearch software is a fundamental and vital part of research, yet significant challenges to discoverability, productivity, quality, reproducibility, and sustainability exist. Improving the practice of scholarship is a common goal of the open science, open source, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) communities and research software is now being understood as a type of digital object to which FAIR should be applied. This emergence reflects a maturation of the research community to better understand the crucial role of FAIR research software in maximising research value. The FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS) Working Group has adapted the FAIR Guiding Principles to create the FAIR Principles for Research Software (FAIR4RS Principles). The contents and context of the FAIR4RS Principles are summarised here to provide the basis for discussion of their adoption. Examples of implementation by organisations are provided to share information on how to maximise the value of research outputs, and to encourage others to amplify the importance and impact of this work.

The Alliance Research Software (RS) Strategy for 2025-2030 (the RS Strategy) builds on past RS foundations, leverages the strengths of past RS programs, while at the same time addressing the weaknesses of having a historically disjoint and uncoordinated national strategy for RS.The RS Strategy presents: - an overview of the current state of the RS landscape nationally and internationally; - a set of challenges and opportunities in RS service provision for the Alliance as a national funder, service provider and coordinator; - a vision and goals to support the complete RS lifecycle (developing, deploying, and sustaining) while also developing career paths for the research software experts (RSEs) who create and support it;  - strategic recommendations that will increase the value of an integrated DRI ecosystem by focusing on high-value aspects of RS and in particular where RS overlaps with Advanced Research Computing (ARC) and Research Data Management (RDM).

Software and the people who produce it have revolutionised the way that research is conducted, pervading all aspects of the research lifecycle. These emerging tools and techniques require new skills and, often, new forms of research collaboration that combine a variety of professional capabilities. This report delivers a better understanding of the software and skills required in order for research computing in the UK to respond to the challenges it faces over the next five years across three overlapping levels: people, infrastructure, and policy. This study has been funded through the UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure programme, and will contribute to the development of national programmes. It was undertaken between December 2021 and August 2022 by the Software Sustainability Institute, with researchers based at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Southampton, in collaboration with Dr Michelle Barker.

This blog analyses work evidencing the importance of research software to research outcomes, to enable the research software community to find useful evidence to share with key influencers. This analysis considers papers relating to meta-research, policy, community, education and training, research breakthroughs and specific software.
The Research Software Alliance (ReSA) Taskforce for the importance of research software was formed initially to bring together existing evidence showing the importance of research software in the research process. This kind of information is critical to achieving ReSA’s vision to have research software recognised and valued as a fundamental and vital component of research worldwide.

The Research Software Engineer Knowledge Integration Landscape Review was written by the ExCALIBUR Programme Community. It documents the concept of the Research Software Engineer (RSE) and their role in many of todays computational science projects. The review provides a comprehensive review of the skills required by Research Software Engineers in HPC and their future training needs

Software is essential in modern research; it plays vital roles at multiple stages of the research lifecycle. The term Research Software is widely used in the academic community but, what do we mean when we use these terms? Software and research? When you think of software, you may think of a digital object that is executed on a machine. Yet software is more than just this, it is a complex and evolving artifact. It may be a concept or a project designed to solve a puzzle by a team or a community that develops its functionalities and algorithms, which might not be digital objects. Furthermore, the software artifacts are digital objects, e.g., executables and source code files for different environments. These digital artifacts, which are used in a scholarly setting, might be important in the research process, but should all these be considered Research Software? This report is the result of a discussion examining the scope of the community definition of the FAIR principles for Research Software as part of the work in the FAIR for Research Software working group (FAIR4RS). We aim to clarify the scope of the FAIR principles by identifying which software artifacts the FAIR principles should apply to. This discussion portrayed a complex landscape of software uses in research and existing definitions that can help to better understand the complexity of different types of software in academia. Finally we determine the scope of the FAIR4RS with a short and concise definition of Research Software as a separate metaphor of software in research.

This report aims to provide a brief overview of the funding landscape for research software throughout its life cycle. This report explains the methodology, considers available information, and suggests future work.

Research software is a critical enabler of research, and a key driver of innovation and economic growth. The ARDC commissioned a survey in 2021 on the scale and distribution of software engineering or development capability within research organisations in Australia. This report analyses and contextualises the survey results against national and international studies to consider the extent to which this research software engineering capability may be meeting Australia’s research needs. The 70 survey responses included representation from: 18 universities 6 National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) facilities 3 national and/or state eResearch bodies 3 research centres; and 2 Publicly Funded Research Agencies (PFRAs). About the Australian Research Data Commons. The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) provides the Australian research community and industry access to nationally significant, data intensive digital research infrastructure, platforms, skills and collections of high quality data. ARDC’s strategic themes include a focus on research software, in recognition of its role as a critical enabler of research and a key driver of innovation and economic growth.

Scientific research increasingly relies on open source software. Funding open source software development requires intentional focus on issues of scholarly credit, unique forms of labor, maintenance, governance, and inclusive community-building. Such issues cut across different scientific disciplines which makes them of interest to a variety of funders and institutions, but may present challenges in understanding generalized needs. Here we present ten simple rules for investing in scientific open source software and the teams who build and maintain it.

A pre-final release of the survey data to feedback on anything that's missing or needs correction.

Commonly identified issues in the research software community include how to encourage people into research software career paths, how to retain them, and how to encourage a diverse range of people to enter the sector. This blog post attempts to help address them by considering existing projects and resources related to the research software profession in the following areas: encouraging entry, including by a diversity of people; retention and inclusion of staff; and exit paths. This blog post also provides some ideas from other fields before focusing on how stakeholders can assist in overcoming these major challenges.

The importance of data, software, and computation has long been recognized in academia and is reflected in the recent rise of job opportunities for data scientists and research software engineers. Big data, for example, created a wave of novel job descriptions before the term Data Scientist (DS) was widely used. And even though software has become a major driver for research (Nangia and Katz, 2017), Research Software Engineer (RSE) as a formal role has lagged behind in terms of job openings, recognition, and prominence within the community. Despite their importance in the academic research ecosystem, the value of DS and RSE roles is not yet widely understood or appreciated in the academic community, and research data, software, and workflows are, in many domains, still regarded as by-products of research. Data Scientists and Research Software Engineers (DS/RSEs) face similar challenges when it comes to career paths in academia - both are non-traditional academic professions with few incentives and a lack of clear career trajectories. This guidebook presents the challenges and suggestions for solutions to improve the situation and to reach a wide community of stakeholders needed to advance career paths for DS/RSEs.

This Declaration on Funding Research Software Sustainability builds on actions undertaken by the Research Software Alliance (ReSA), research funding organisations, and the community surrounding it to develop awareness about the role funders can play in sustaining software in the longer term. It was initiated during an international workshop attended by representatives of funding organisations in Amsterdam on 8-9 November 2022, organised by ReSA and the Netherlands eScience Center. The Declaration is a first step towards formalising, on a global level, the basic principles and recommendations related to funding the sustainability of research software, including the people needed to achieve this goal. The aim of this Declaration is to raise awareness of the role of funding practice in the sustainability of research software, and to improve that practice. The Declaration includes a limited number of recommendations and an accompanying ADORE.software Toolkit. For the purposes of this declaration, research software is defined as “all forms of software that were created during the research process or for a research purpose”. A fuller description is included in the accompanying ADORE.software Toolkit